


The Comforts of Home

by grandfatherclock



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-25
Updated: 2018-03-25
Packaged: 2019-04-07 16:03:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14084523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grandfatherclock/pseuds/grandfatherclock
Summary: John has an emotional crisis when realizes he’s falling in love with Gary. Gary does his best to help.





	The Comforts of Home

When John woke up, he at first had no idea where he was.

This feeling was not necessarily unusual or even unwelcome in and of itself─he’d grown accustomed to the experience of becoming blackout drunk, seducing people who arguably knew better into letting him into their homes, and fucking them senseless before waking up to a lonely disorientation and leaving them forever. If this had been that, he’d have just lit a cigarette to distract himself, and then got on with his day.

But this wasn’t that.

For one, he was relaxed in a way that he hadn’t in a very long time. Moreover, even more surprising, and potentially worrying, he didn’t have a headache nor the other accompanying factors of excessive alcohol consumption. The room he was in was far from the usual dodgy motel or apartment. In fact, it was nice, painted a soft peach, and the bed was comfortable. The windows were open, and gentle sunlight streamed into the room through billowing curtains.

“Bollocks,” he said, mildly horrified. He got up quickly and put on his clothes. Only after he’d put on his wrinkled trench coat and inhaled the smell of cigarette smoke did he feel enough like himself to turn around and look at Gary.

He was blissfully still asleep. A little half-smile was playing on his face and his hair was mussed.

John was surprised to realize he was smiling unconsciously. Fuck, he thought, with deep passion. This was how he’d acted last night, too. Gary had again invited him to play Dungeons & Dragons, and John had relented, with a flirtatious, “Well, if you  _insist_ , squire.” He’d had no real reason to, but rationalized it at the time as a way to have some more great sex. Never mind the fact that Gary’s face, filled with wonder and gratitude and something else, made him feel fulfilled in a way that was frankly uncomfortable.

Which led him here, now, with the exact same feeling in his chest. Feeling  _content_ , and  _satisfied_ , and  _needed_ , which was a strange thing to feel after a one-night-stand. Yet it kept him trapped in the domesticity of Gary’s room, looking distantly at Gary’s pastel blue curtains, and his bookshelf with worn-out science fiction and graphic novels. Wasting time, hoping for an excuse to stay.

John knew his illogical heart, and what it wanted: for Gary to wake up, to charm him with his encyclopedic knowledge of  _Tales of the Black Freighter_ , or some other fixation of his. And he had strong and conflicting feelings about that, all of which he didn’t necessarily want to address.

But he was already spiraling, because he had to make the same decision he made with nearly every person he knew. Stay or leave. Hurt them by staying or hurt them by leaving.

After all, shouldn’t he leave Gary’s life as quickly as he’d entered it? Try to limit the effect the suffering and chaos and death that followed John’s every breath would have on Gary’s life? Gary deserved better.

But he also deserved better than John leaving without saying goodbye, whether it be a permanent epilogue or a flirtatious promise of a future encounter. To live with the pain of wondering why someone would leave without telling him why, whether it was his fault.

John knew that pain intimately. It was easy to leave someone he’d met at a bar, someone who expected and needed nothing of and from him. But this was Gary. Gary who fell in love and trusted as easily as he breathed, who for better or for worse, and probably for worse, had believed in John.

The fact that John was even  _debating_  right and wrong, fair and unfair, was a huge warning flag that he didn’t want to analyze just yet.

He needed some air.

 (-)

John lit a cigarette, his fingers trembling slightly. He was sitting on a chair in the balcony of Gary’s apartment, the one he remembered Gary had told him about during their first one-night-stand. John had pushed him onto his bed, and as Gary had told him when the building was constructed, John had said, “Gary, can you  _please_  not talk about architecture when we have sex?”

He smiled halfheartedly to himself at the memory, but he felt sick in his stomach in a way that was surprising, to the say the least. Alienating was a better word. He felt alienated, betrayed by the hopeful extent of his desires.

Twenty minutes, and he was no closer to a decision.

He finally got up, crumpling his cigarette and throwing into the garbage can. He opened the sliding door, came back into the apartment, and closed the door behind him. His dread increased with every step he made back into Gary’s life.

He was standing in the kitchen now, equal distances from the door and Gary’s bedroom. This was not a choice he could worm his way out of, a responsibility he could evade. He just stood there, frozen.

 (-)

Because responsibility was not John Constantine’s specialty. he chose a third option.

He contemplated the picture in a glass frame on the white wall near the kitchen. It was nothing especially remarkable. It featured Gary as a kid, maybe twelve or thirteen, his huge smile making him instantly recognizable. He was hugging who was evidently his mother and father, one on either side of him. The father had a strictness to him, a straight back, but the laugh lines indicated that he was friendly. A good man. The mother was shorter than the father, a lovely smile on her face and sunglasses perched on her forehead that pushed away her curly hair.

They were lovely.

It was irrational, to contemplate the parents of the man he just had a one-night-stand with, who he might very likely given his history and general disposition hurt and leave. But the photo, the very act of remembrance, and  _tribute_ ──

John was reminded of his sister. After all, Cheryl was the only person he had a picture of from his childhood. It was faded, and folded, and wrinkled, but also locked in a drawer in his desk, protected by various incantations. He hadn’t looked at her, nor her photo, in years. Ample evidence of how much indecision informed John Constantine’s life, when it hurt too much to leave and never ever look back.

Cheryl had been a trooper, able to survive the tragedy of her life and be happy. She’d told him once, looking at her wedding ring in an almost dream-like state, that it affected her too, just in different ways. John had become a generally dysfunctional nightmare, whereas she had felt that she had overcompensated, jumping into a nuclear life very young, even if she was head-over-heels for the man she married. “It’s not a contest, John,” she said, trying to hold his hand.

He’d moved away from her. 

She’d smiled sadly. “Just because my way of coping is more convenient"─her lips twisted into a mildly resentful smile as she said that word─"than yours doesn’t mean I’m better at recovery than you.” Her eyes flicked to his hands, twisting anxiously. “This isn’t a contest, John. I’m not your enemy.”

Of course, he’d been just a teenager when she told him that. An angry and resentful teenager, who hadn’t yet caused a demon to drag a young girl to hell, who hadn’t let so many his friends die because of his own bullshit, who hadn’t started smoking and drinking and making deals with demons and breaking good people’s hearts in a path that led him here, to Gary’s apartment, staring at Gary’s parents and wishing for something impossible.

 (-)

“That’s my mother,” Gary said behind him. He cleared his throat awkwardly. “And my dad.”

Evidently John had been so absorbed in his self-torture that Gary of all people had been able to sneak up on him. “They must be real special,” he said, not able to think of something witty and irreverent, or completely cover the raw undercurrent in his casual, almost bored, tone. “My old man would’ve  _never_  let me be a time agent,” he added.

Gary bit his lip, and John remembered that he probably researched John’s family history before enlisting his help. He wanted to say something, anything, to distract and alleviate him, them both, but Gary just said, “They actually don’t know.” He walked up to John and also looked at the photo.

He realized he wanted to kiss Gary. Not roughly, not with the intention of repeating last night, though he wouldn’t necessarily be opposed to it, but to kiss him for the sake of it, because he could, because Gary wore a robe and his hair was still disheveled,  because a lot of things.

Gary seemed to take John’s silence for judgement, because he shuffled the weight of his body from one foot to the other, and turned a little pink. “They are, though,” he added. “Special.”

“You haven’t changed a bit, have you mate?” John stated, amused. “You were, what, twelve?” His tone was gentle and teasing, and he likes that he can make Gary smile. This infatuation ran deeper than he already thought, and he’d already thought that he had it bad. Seeing Gary now, with his bleary eyes and fluffy pink robe, John wondered how he had ever entertained the thought of leaving without saying something.

“I’m actually thirteen in the picture,” Gary said. He laughed nervously. “It was the day of my bar mitzvah. I was so excited to give my speech.” He winced. “Sorry. This must bore you.”

“Not at all,” John said, feeling sick, wanting to sit down. Today seemed to be the day that all his repressed bullshit forced itself out of him. He wanted to laugh hysterically, and would’ve, but he didn’t want Gary to think he was more fucked up than Gary already knew him to be.

He was reminded of Cheryl again. Cheryl who had known their mother, known that side of their heritage. John had always felt out of step with her, and rebuffed any attempt she had made to introduce him to that world. Out of anger, fear, the same bullshit that led to him burning all his bridges and pursuing the dark arts.

Gary reset the glasses on his face. “Were you leaving?” he asked, with false cheer. He needn’t have bothered, everything he felt was obvious on his face. John loved that about him. He hated it right now though, because he could see how embarrassed he’d made Gary.

John could say yes. He would’ve said yes, had it been anyone else. But the memory of his sister haunted him. He knew that unlike other sexual encounters, if he left, if he didn’t explore what that look in Gary’s eyes meant, he’d regret it forever. He’d told Sara not to hurt the time director lady, in which he’d really been asking her not to hurt them both by succumbing to her own insecurities, but John had always been rotten at following his own advice.

He remembered Cheryl’s lonely hand on the table, waiting even after he’d rejected her comfort.

“Never had mine,” he said.

“What?” Gary said, biting his lip again.

John smiled, smirked really. “Never had my bar mitzvah. I’m sure you’ve read my history.”

“No!” Gary claimed. Then he winced. “Well, yes. Ava made me do a background check on you before we asked for your help in exorcising Mallus out of Sara. But I only know the broad strokes.”

“It’s okay, love,” John said, and he really meant it. He was no longer surprised or threatened by his instinctive desire to comfort Gary. “If you hadn’t done a background check on me, your lot would’ve been fools.”

John could see different emotions flitting through Gary’s face, from relief to contentment, to awkwardness and then something he didn’t quite recognize. “So you never had your bar mitzvah?” he said. He smiled, a little self-deprecating. “Well, I didn’t know  _that_.”

It was meant to make him smile, and it did.

“You want to talk about it?” he ventured, hesitantly. Hopefully. “I can make breakfast.”

John laughed, a rough sound. “I’d love to see you try, mate,” he said, “but yes.”


End file.
